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Running has repaid me not only with fitness and weight loss and other..

Running has repaid me not only with fitness and weight loss and other..

Running has repaid me not only with fitness and weight loss but with travel when I needed a break from my life, goals when I was struggling to redefine myself, discipline and a sense of purpose when I was suffering from lack of direction.

I was dragged into joining a group called Runner’s High to train to run 10K by my sister in law Anupama Harish and took up to running. I knew that I had reached an age in life where I had to quit being a couch potato and quit cooking up excuses for my lack of initiative to take up exercising. I was suffering from a weak back and also from constant bouts of cold and general weakness. I had also reached a point in life where I was a bit depressed even though I did not know about it or did not feel it at that time and tried to keep a very happy and spiritual outlook towards life, not realising that I was actually feeling stagnated and suffocated.

Once I joined the community I saw that it was a vibrant group that was involved in a lot of outreach programs and activities to make running a part of curriculum in schools for special children and other educational institutions.

I could barely run 50mts and the first season and the first few months were full of aches in my knee and shin. My first run at the Bangalore Ultra ‘12 12.5K was not very great or encouraging. I continued training and I was helped by my coaches and I was able to run the Auroville 2013 10K to great satisfaction. The euphoria that I experienced after that run was enough to get me hooked to running for life. I was still apprehensive about joining in on any of the other RH activities and tried to stay away from any discussions that would get me involved into anything other than running.

In the RH community, for each training season the large community of runners are divided into smaller buddy groups where runners of similar location of running and same goals of running are clubbed together to form buddy groups. During the next season when we were training for the TCS 10k and Ananda Yana run, our group was asked to assist a wonderful human being and a visually impaired runner called Raghava during his runs and to run with him. Our entire group came together and this act of running with Raghava forged a very close bond amongst us and running with Raghava itself was a very inspiring act due to his immense self belief and positive energy which percolated into me and infused new confidence in me and helped me get rid of all my inhibitions and apprehensions. His love for sprinting was very infectious and he used to literally drag me through all my runs with him.

I was also involved in volunteering for organising the Ananda Yana run which brought me closer to the RH community and made me accept the community whole heartedly. Somewhere along the way I found that the more I got involved with the RH community, my running got better and I was able to achieve personal best timings with every run which only made me want to run harder and train better. My KTM 10K run and Bangalore Ultra 2013 12.5 K run have given me great satisfaction.

I chanced upon running when I was feeling desperate, feeling lost and bored and disturbed. And running has repaid me not only with fitness and weight loss but with travel when I needed a break from my life, goals when I was struggling to redefine myself, discipline and a sense of purpose when I was suffering from lack of direction.

I am now a part of a large community of people from varied backgrounds whose lives are extremely different in every way but like-minded in their love of running. Ultimately, running has given me a whole new life and which is so much more fulfilling than the path I was in my twenties and early thirties. My husband and children have finally understood that my need to run is like my need to breathe, eat and sleep and it is as basic as that.